


You Brought It Back To Me

by Austennerdita2533



Series: Sometimes Your Touch Feels Like Teeth: Bloodied By Intimacy [3]
Category: The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, F/M, Short and sweet and a tad sorrowful, TO 5x12 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-13 20:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15372363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Austennerdita2533/pseuds/Austennerdita2533
Summary: Klaus and Caroline share a pained but tender goodbye before he leaves to sacrifice himself for Hope.





	You Brought It Back To Me

**Author's Note:**

> Just a trifle based on one of the hand-holding stills from TO 5x12. 
> 
> xx Ashlee Bree

It’s all about tenderness when he reaches out to twine her hand in his.

It’s all about rueful, pained words which dangle from a long breathy sigh as he closes the distance with a step that slides out a resounding, ‘ _this is it, isn’t it_?’

Klaus fears time is slipping away between their touching fingertips, the granules grating into smaller and smaller pieces of almost-somethings-but-not-quites, so he utters a final goodbye in the event that he doesn’t make it. In case he doesn’t survive the horrors clawing toward him in vined haste before and behind him today.

Bitterness lines the walls of his chest, hopelessness sloshing against the bricks in his stomach.  
The taste is metallic and frothy as it slams against the back of his molars because what if this love between them dies before it even has the chance to live? What if it’s drained away before they have the opportunity to dip their toes in it? Float in it? Swim? How many spoils must he sacrifice to the devil to escape the hell of loneliness, of torment; to feel the warmth of Caroline’s palm sliding against his tainted but naked soul for a few minutes more?

Just a few minutes more of bliss with her, that’s all he wants. That’s all he asks.

What precious little can he leave her with, anyway? What now? How much will Caroline lose out on because he once swore to shower her with it all, everything—the whole bloody world and all its untapped exquisiteness—only for him to be unable to fulfill that promise plus save his daughter’s life at the same time?

The world is cruel and cursed, and Klaus knows this.

_He knows, he knows._

The problem is that he and his siblings’ lives have been crueler. Cursed worst than most. Bloodier than them all. Isn't losing Caroline like this - with her heart close enough to touch but not to pocket - proof of that? Isn’t it such a horrible star-crossed joke? Like some tragedy straight out of Shakespeare’s weeping fountain pen.

The Richter scale’s arrows pitch more and more toward ultimate destruction the longer he stands before her with despair frozen around his mouth, an apology the color of a sunken sun burnt into his eyes, fear anchoring his feet to the floor because she doesn’t know - she still has no bloody idea what she means to him, does she? Does she? And it all could be over between them soon.

In minutes…

In seconds…

In the time it takes to deposit one final kiss against her trembling, disbelieving lips…

Forever.

It’s why Klaus knows he can’t leave the room right now (or perhaps this life) without stepping in nearer to impart the truth she deserves to hear before he expends his last chance and it’s too late. Before it’s really, truly, too late.

She must read beneath his years and years of unspoken lines now; she must know them out loud. To share them but once feels like too short a price for Klaus to pay for his abominable silence, but to share them never would feel hollower to him than a chance wasted.

“You’re the one who brought love back to life inside of me, Caroline,” he whispers against the shell of her ear at last. “It’s how I know that no matter how, or if, or when I meet my final demise on this earth today, my feelings for you will remain.”

The air is stale, stagnant.

It’s so quiet yet tense between them in this schoolroom that once the words leave his mouth, they vibrate on the tip of his tongue like a hummingbird’s wings.

Klaus then presses a feather kiss against her cheek before he turns away to meet his fate. When he reaches the doorframe, doom swirling in the clouds ahead, his fist tapping a death march beat against the oak wood, he pauses only to add one final thing to Caroline over his shoulder with a short wistful smile,

“They’re the kind of feelings that never die,” he says as the darkness swallows him up outside. His voice carrying like a requiem on the wind. “Because of you, love. They’re alive because of you."

“Take care to remember that, won’t you? Hold onto it for me…and hold on tight.”

With that, Klaus disappears without knowing if or when he’ll see her again. He only hopes.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always greatly appreciated, and thanks for reading!


End file.
